DigiKey at Sensors Converge 2024

Sensors Converge 2024 was held at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California.  There’s growth and excitement in the air.  A few trends that seemed more prominent this year included TMR (tunnel magnetoresistance effect) sensors, MEMS microphones, and RFIDs for asset tracking.

Components with TMR sensors were displayed by many, including Allegro, TDK, and MULTIDIMENSION. The TMR technology seems to be of interest due to its resolution associated with angle sensing (like a motor shaft with 0.1 degree of resolution). These same attributes can also be applied to current sensing, and there’s a potential to see more power-efficient replacement of hall effect sensors. Additionally, there’s low temperature drift and low drift over lifetime of product, which makes this a good fit for Automotive and Industrial solutions.

TDK’s TMR sensor was embedded into the frame of a pair of glasses and showcased how it could be used as a Magnetometer. MULTIDIMENSION was showing a TMR rotary encoder.

Seeing the MEMS Microphones & Vibrational Sensors brought a good understanding of their value. They’re very small in size (3 mm x 2 mm x 1 mm), reliable, and consume low current (100 micro Amps). They can be paired with an ASIC and sit within a small housing. The housing can provide a lot of protection from environmental aspects. It makes sense why these are a good fit within MedTech (like hearing aids), and Automotive (outside of vehicle monitoring).

Knowles showed their V2S200D digital vibration sensor. The screen above shows the audio sample at the top followed by the intensity charts at the bottom, which have frequency (y-axis) and amplitude (color) against time (x-axis). The first sample and chart are showing the raw sample (with all the background noise of the conference and the 7 kHz resonance peak of the sensor). The final sample and chart show a nicely scrubbed signal that removes the background noise and resonance response of the sensor.  It’s impressive technology when you consider how small it is, and that it can be fully enclosed (to protect from water or other environmental factors).

Asset tracking with RFIDs was on display from Molex and Murata. Although asset tracking with RFIDs has been talked about for many years and has had several false starts, I think the quality use cases are starting to become clearer.  Murata was showing some higher-margin areas like pharma and healthcare tracking.

It was nice to see the Sensors Converge crowd stay grounded, balanced, and true to what continues to evolve in the area of electronic sensors.